GOTO Conferences
11 HN recommenders · recommended in 17 months, 2016–2026
40:39 · 1.5M views · Jul 14, 2015
Dave Thomas, a co-author of the Agile Manifesto, argues at GOTO Amsterdam 2015 that Agile as a branded industry has lost its meaning. He says agile is an adjective, not a noun, and urges developers to reclaim agility.
Offered in nearly every Agile or Scrum complaint thread as the authoritative take on what agile was meant to be versus what it became.
20 comments from Hacker News
I highly recommend this video of a Dave Thomas talk about what agile was supposed to be vs what it has become. Most of us are probably stuck working with some sort of Agile methodology regardless of whether or not we'd like to, but it can still be nudged in the direction that Dave talks about. this video
Agile Is Dead: By Dave Thomas this video I love his talks for a few reasons: Often times... 1. He's anti-hype 2. He's contriversal 3. He's right.
I think Dave Thomas[0] made some great points recently [1] about what Agile (as a noun) has become and I think it addresses some of your complaints. Note this isn't just a repeat of the agile manifesto, it is him discussing why he hates what Agile has come to mean to a lot of people and it sounds like his grump-level closely matches yours. The jist I get from it is that agile has become an Enantiodromia[2] and has in some ways simply replaced the problems it was there to fix. That doesn't mean it has to be that way, but thats what happens when people take something and create a religion around it. In my company we call our process "agile", but what that really means to us is to do the minimum amount of analysis we can to develop the features that the customer actually wants, and when they realize what they thought that they wanted was not really what they wanted, we can change it without wasting massive amounts of time. If we find that our process is causing problems for the devs, we tweak it. When we find we're not doing enough analysis in some situations, we try to improve those situations. No buzz words really, just what is best for us and what is best for the customers. [0] [LINK] [1] this video [2] [LINK]
1) Do not attempt to live code. change your code via version control, build small videos, copy and paste... whatever you do... do not try and live code 2) Read "The presentation secrets of Steve Jobs" ... its not really about Steve Jobs so much as its about how to be a great presenter. 3) building or writing a talk is significantly less important than the delivery... which means that more of your time should be spent on how to deliver the speech (recording I find is the best way to practice) 4) Pick a single thing and do it well, do not attempt to put too much into a talk or tackle something massively complex. 5) Make sure that everyone is walking away with something they can actually use. This doesn't require it be a hard skill... "Soft" or philosophical utilities are just as good 6) Have Fun and be funny... Speakers have a tendency to want to show off the size of their intellect, and the level their competency- having a speech be entertaining is way way more important. 7) DO NOT READ FROM YOUR SLIDES. know your shit. slides are supplementary Extra Credit. Here's a collection of some fantastic technical speeches: * [LINK] * [LINK] * [LINK] * [LINK] * this video * [LINK]
Usually, the more a team advertise itself as Agile, the less agility it actually has. I myself have never seen Agile work well, not even close. I saw plenty of make-believe and head-in-the-sand and as mentioned in earlier comments, insane amounts of cargo culting. I really like the way Dave Thomas put it: [LINK] He also made a talk about it: this video These days this is the only methodology I follow and it works wonders, anything more I feel is just noise. At the end of the day nothing replaces actual engineering and understanding what you're doing.